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John Hay 

Scholar 
Statesman 



John Hay 

Scholar 
Statesman 



An Address 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE AlUMNI ASSOCIATION 

OF 

Brown University 
June 19, 1906 



BY 

Joseph Bucklin Bishop 



Protidence, Rhode Island 
1906 



By ti'ar-sfer 
NOV 27 Ibu/ 



1 : 


JTANDAUD 




9 : 


PKINTINQ 




O : 


COMPANY 




6 : 


1 . PROV1C.EHCE, 


R 



JOHN HAY: SCHOLAR - STATESMAN 



TH E literature of addresses on occasions 
like the present abounds in disquisitions 
upon the " Scholar in Politics," with elab- 
orate and varying views as to his proper function 
therein. I have listened to many of these and 
have read many more. They have applied in 
nearly, or quite, all cases to the abstract scholar, 
and have been speculative rather than biograph- 
ical or historical. In opposition to this body of 
literature there has flowed for many years, from 
the party press and from the champions of active 
politics, a continuous and somewhat perfervid 
stream of ridicule, usually contemptuous, of the 
mere scholar as unfit to play any except an absurd 
role in politics, chiefly because of his unfamiliarity 
with the actual world in which he lives. The 
latter view is not confined to this country, and is 
far from being modern. Lord Bacon records that 
" It hath been ordinary with politique men to 
extenuate and disable learned men as pedants." 
Our latter-day terms are " doctrinaire," or " theo- 
rist," or, in the frank vernacular of the expert 
politician, "one of them littery fellers." The 
same idea is behind the term in every case. It 
is based upon contempt for mere book-learning, 
and for the results of human experience as re- 



4 John Hay 

corded in books. It finds expression frequently in 
such inquiries as " What care we for abroad ? " and 
in declarations that this nation is so great and 
powerful, so distinct in character and purpose and 
so without compare in resource and possibility of 
development, that it is a guide to itself and has 
little to learn from the experience of other nations. 

I think we must all admit that there is some 
provocation for the contemptuous opinion which 
the practical politician holds of the scholar in 
politics, that he can cite instances which give 
ground for it, and that if he is too sweeping in 
his condemnation his own critics are not guiltless 
of the same offense. 

I am here to-day, in response to an invitation 
with which you have honored me, to speak of 
a scholar whose achievements in politics have not 
merely silenced criticism but have converted 
it into unstinted praise, have brought shining 
honor to our Alma Mater, have exalted the name 
and widened the influence of our country through- 
out the world, and by advancing the cause of peace 
among nations have contributed immeasurably 
to the welfare of all mankind. To estimate wor- 
thily a career like that of John Hay is a task far 
beyond my powers, and I enter upon it with great 
diffidence and with unfeigned regret that it was 
not assigned to more competent hands. 



Scholar - Statesman 



It is not my purpose to review in detail the life 
and services of Mr. Hay. To do that would be to 
exceed the most liberal limits of an address like 
this. I shall merely sketch in outline his career, 
depicting the influences under which his character 
was formed, striving to show from what he did 
what manner of man he was, to interpret in the 
light of his acts and of many years of friendship 
and intimate association, the principles and theo- 
ries upon which he based his public conduct, and to 
draw therefrom such instruction as seems to be of 
value to us as Americans deeply interested in those 
governmental problems which are pressing unceas- 
ingly for solution and which seldom in our history 
have been more numerous or more momentous 
than they are to-day. 

John Hay was a shy, dreamy, poetic youth, 
scarcely twenty years of age, when in June, 1858, he 
bade farewell to Brown and returned to his home 
in Illinois. He had spent three quiet, secluded 
years here, living more in the society of books than 
of men, for he had the sensitive nature of the poet 
and was endowed with that capacity for exquisite 
joy in the things of the spirit which is Heaven's 
choicest gift to the intellectual man. If ever youth 
on the threshold of manhood seemed destined to a 
life of complete devotion to the gentle profession of 
letters he did. Little did he dream as he departed 



6 John Hay 

from " the still air of delightful studies " that he was 
to enter at once upon a six-year course in the most 
extraordinary school of human experience that the 
world has ever known, under the tuition of a 
teacher who was to make for himself a place among 
the foremost men of all the ages. 

He began the study of law with his uncle, whose 
ofifice was next door to and opened into the office 
of Abraham Lincoln. Between the uncle and 
Lincoln there existed an intimate friendship of 
many years. They were constantly together. Into 
this daily intercourse Hay entered easily by force 
of his alert intelligence and attractive personality, 
winning his way immediately to Lincoln's confi- 
dence and esteem. 

Note the year in which this companionship 
began. On June i6, 1858, Lincoln, speaking before 
the Republican State Convention at Springfield, 
made his immortal declaration : " ' A house divided 
against itself cannot stand ; ' I believe the govern- 
ment cannot endure permanently half slave and half 
free." That was the bugle call that straightened 
the wavering line between the slavery and anti- 
slavery forces of the land. It astounded and 
alarmed Lincoln's supporters, but it stirred the 
conscience of the North and turned its attention 
to Lincoln as its leader in the rapidly approaching 
" irrepressible conflict." In the ranks of Lincoln's 



Scholar - Statesman 



personal followers the declaration caused a com- 
motion little short of panic. They wrote letters of 
protest in great numbers and descended upon his 
law office in angry swarms, beseeching him to 
withdraw or modify the disturbing phrases. He 
listened to all with patience, and to all made the 
same reply : " If I had to draw a pen across my 
record and erase my whole life from sight, and 
I had one poor gift or choice as to what I should 
save from the wreck, I would choose that speech 
and leave it to the world unerased." 

An immediate outcome of this speech was the 
famous Lincoln-Douglas debate which occupied 
the summer of 1858 and which had the whole 
country for an audience. Lincoln was defeated at 
its close as a candidate for United States Senator, 
but, as subsequent events showed, he had won 
a nomination and election to the Presidency. His 
law office in Springfield was his political head- 
quarters during this period, and in it young Hay 
was obtaining his first lessons in practical politics. 
It is easy to imagine him an eager listener to the 
animated and often heated discussions which went 
on there between Lincoln and his party advisers, 
with Lincoln lifting them steadily and unswerv- 
ingly to the exalted moral level upon which he had 
taken his stand. The same instruction was contin- 
ued with rising intensity, as the great struggle for 



8 John Hay 

human freedom drew nearer and nearer, in 1859 
and in the campaign for the Presidency in i860. 
When in February, 1861, Lincoln bade his pathetic 
farewell to his neighbors and friends in Springfield, 
he had become so attached to Hay that he took 
him with him to Washington as one of his private 
secretaries. From that day till Lincoln's death, 
Hay was his constant companion, living in the 
White House and sharing his confidence as scarcely 
any one else did. 

Soon after Lincoln's death, Hay was appointed 
secretary of legation at Paris, as had been agreed 
upon between Secretary Seward and Lincoln 
before the tragedy, and he departed at once for his 
post. Secretary Seward, in writing to Mr. Bigelow, 
the American Minister at^ Paris, said of Hay : " He 
is a noble as well as a gifted young man, perfectly 
true and manly." His love of learning revived in 
undiminished force as soon as he arrived in Paris, 
and during the two years he remained there he not 
only mastered completely the French language, 
but acquired a comprehensive and thorough knowl- 
edge of French literature and art and institutions. 
From Paris he went to Vienna as Charge d' Affaires, 
where he spent a year, studying with the same 
eagerness and with similar results the language, 
literature, art and institutions of the country, and 
then was sent to Madrid as Secretary of Legation, 



Scholar -Statesman 



where he spent two of the most enjoyable years of 
his life. How thorough a master he became of the 
Spanish language and literature, how closely he 
studied Spanish character, customs and traditions, 
and how his soul revelled in the matchless art treas- 
ures of that ancient monarchy, stand revealed in his 
" Castillian Days," one of the most charming books 
in any language. Returning to his own country in 
the winter of 1871, he entered the service of the 
" New York Tribune " as an editorial writer, re- 
maining there four years. For the next five years 
he devoted his time mainly to the composition of 
the " Life of Lincoln," a task upon which he and 
Mr. Nicolay were engaged for twenty years. He 
broke into this task reluctantly in 1879 to become 
Assistant Secretary of State under Mr. Evarts for 
two years. In 1897 President McKinley appointed 
him Ambassador to England, and a year and a half 
later he recalled him and made him Secretary 
of State. 

Let us sum up the education of this man, as 
at 60 years of age he took his seat at the head 
of the Department of State. Six years with 
Abraham Lincoln in the study of men, of politics 
and of government in the mighty crisis of a civil 
war; five years abroad in the study of diplomacy, 
European institutions, politics and languages ; two 
years in the State Department in the study of diplo- 



lo John Hay 

matic methods in this country ; a year and a half as 
Ambassador at the Court of St. James, a supplemen- 
tary course in European diplomacy, institutions and 
politics ; twenty years of painstaking, indefatigable, 
masterful study of Abraham Lincoln and his time, 
resulting in a work which not only takes high rank 
among the great biographies of the world, but is also 
an authoritative history of the epoch preceding and 
including our civil war. 

When this pupil and disciple of Lincoln, this 
life-long student of art and literature and gov- 
ernment, became Secretary of State, he had for the 
first time opportunity to test to the full the value of 
his training and the extent of his powers. He had 
been a useful servant of his country in minor posi- 
tions at foreign courts, had won high distinction as 
Ambassador at the Court of St. James, taking eas- 
ily a place in the same rank with Motley and Low- 
ell, and had been an excellent Assistant Secretary 
of State. Now he stepped into the broad field of 
international relations at the moment when the 
United States was passing into a new era and ex- 
panding into a world-power among the nations. 
The war with Spain had just ended, and his first 
official act of large importance was the signing of 
the Treaty of Paris. He found himself in the 
presence of new problems at home and abroad, 
problems for whose solution the past history of the 
country afforded no precedent or guide. 



Scholar -Statesman ii 

" Every young and growing people," he said in 
his address on McKinley, " has to meet, at moments, 
the problems of its destiny. When the horny out- 
side case which protects the infancy of a chrysalis 
nation suddenly bursts, and, in a single abrupt 
shock, it finds itself floating on wings which had not 
existed before, whose strength it has never tested, 
among dangers it cannot foresee and is without 
experience to measure, every motion is a problem, 
and every hesitation may be an error. The past 
gives no clue to the future. The fathers, where are 
they.? And the prophets, do they live forever.? 
We are ourselves the fathers ! We are ourselves 
the prophets ! The questions that are put to us 
we must answer without delay, without help — for 
the sphinx allows no one to pass." 

Every question put to Secretary Hay was 
answered without delay, without hesitation, and 
with an unvarying wisdom that commanded the 
instant approval of the country and of the world. 
Step by step he evolved a new national policy, met 
each question as it arose, applying to it what he 
liked with his characteristic mixture of seriousness 
and humor to call his " combination of Monroe 
Doctrine and Golden Rule," and solving it on the 
broad basis of national interest, justice to all men, 
and the welfare of humanity. He followed this 
principle in securing the " Open Door " in China, 



12 John Hay 

and in preserving the integrity of that ancient em- 
pire during the Boxer troubles, and again in the 
war between Japan and Russia by confining hos- 
tilities to Manchuria ; in settling the Samoan ques- 
tion; in ending the dispute about the Alaskan 
boundary ; in advancing the cause of international 
arbitration by urging Peace Conferences and by 
inducing nations to carry their disputes before the 
Hague Tribunal; in appealing to the powers in 
behalf of the persecuted Jews in Roumania and 
securing for them their rights guaranteed by the 
treaty of Berlin ; in obtaining the abrogation of the 
old treaty with Great Britain and the negotiation 
of a new one under which the United States 
secured the right to construct and control an Isth- 
mian Canal, and in recognizing the Republic of 
Panama, thus making it possible to put this right 
into execution. 

With Hay knowledge was power, " for what is 
knowledge," asks Carlyle, "but recorded experi- 
ence ? " For forty years the study of books had 
gone hand in hand with the study of man. He 
had been a more profound scholar because he was 
also an active statesman, and he was a wiser states- 
man because he had been also a scholar. He had 
stored his mind with the garnered wisdom of the 
ages and could view the present and forecast 
the future in the light of the past, could judge 



Scholar -Statesman 13 

what men might do by what men had done. If in 
the presence of new problems he had no clue from 
the past, he had all the light that knowledge of the 
past could give. His forty years of training, of 
study of men and of governments, his intimate 
knowledge of his own and other lands and peoples 
and institutions, fitted him, as perhaps no other 
man in the land was fitted, for the great task 
of formulating and putting in operation the new 
policy for the greater Republic. 

It would be difficult to find in our history a train- 
ing in statesmanship comparable to his. The over- 
shadowing, all-powerful portion of it was, of course, 
the six-year period with Lincoln. That alone would 
have made a useful public servant out of far inferior 
material. Out of Hay, it made a great statesman. 

You are all familiar with Emerson's noble pic- 
ture of Lincoln during this period : " There, by his 
courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile 
council, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure 
in the centre of a heroic epoch. He is the true 
history of the American people of his time. Step 
by step he walked before them ; slow with their 
slowness, quickening his march by theirs, the true 
representative of this continent ; an entirely public 
man ; father of his country, the pulse of twenty 
millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their 
minds articulated by his tongue." 



14 John Hay 

As this heroic figure walked step by step through 
this heroic epoch, John Hay, still in his first quar- 
ter of a century of life, walked with him. He says 
in his life of Lincoln, that he was a " daily and 
hourly witness of the incidents, the anxieties, the 
fears and the hopes which pervaded the Executive 
Mansion and the National Capital." When Lin- 
coln found himself unable to sleep because of 
the burdens that rested upon him, he would arouse 
Hay and the two would pass the night in consulta- 
tion or in reading. 

Think of that as a course of instruction in human 
experience ! To stand daily and hourly, and often 
into and through the night, with that mighty soul in 
travail, and be a witness of its development into 
heroic dimensions, conquering all difficulties, solv- 
ing all problems, while carrying in his heart the sor- 
rows and burdens of a nation, every one of which 
he felt as if it had been his own ! Lowell says : " It 
is a benediction to have lived in the same age and 
in the same country with Abraham Lincoln." What 
shall we call it to have lived in the same house with 
him during these years of war and sufifering and 
death ? Is it any wonder that John Hay came out 
of it, a mature man, trained in statecraft and in 
knowledge of the world, at the age of twenty-seven ? 
He himself said in after years that if he gained 
nothing else by the long association with Lincoln, 



Scholar -Statesman 15 

he hoped at least that he acquired from him the habit 
of judging men and events with candor and im- 
partiaHty. He gained far more than this. All that 
he learned subsequently from books and from ex- 
perience was built upon it. He emerged from the 
white heat of that trial with his character molded 
upon immutable lines. From that day till his 
death he viewed politics and public conduct through 
Lincoln's eyes, judging men and measures by Lin- 
coln's principles and standards, and striving in all 
cases to act as Lincoln would have acted under like 
conditions. This was apparent to all who had the 
inestimable privilege of his friendship and to all who 
have studied his career. He believed in his inmost 
soul that Lincoln's way was the best way and 
that one who desired to serve his country to 
the highest advantage could find no surer guide 
than he. Summing up Lincoln's character in the 
closing chapters of the " Life," Hay wrote, in 1890 : 
" He was tolerant even of evil; though no man 
can ever have lived with a loftier scorn of meanness 
and selfishness, he yet recognized their existence 
and counted with them. He said one day, with a 
flash of cynical wisdom worthy of La Rochefoucauld 
that honest statesmanship was the employment of 
individual meannesses for the public good. He 
never asked perfection of any one ; he did not even 
insist for others upon the high standards he set up 



1 6 John Hay 

for himself. At a time before the word was invented 
he was the first of opportunists. With the fire of 
a reformer and a martyr in his heart he yet pro- 
ceeded by the ways of cautious and practical state- 
craft. He always worked with things as they were 
while never relinquishing the desire and effort to 
make them better." 

That was the political creed of which John Hay 
throughout his life was a devoted disciple. He had 
learned from Lincoln tolerance, patience, charity, 
faith in his country and in his fellow-men, and 
sublime faith in God. It never occurred to him, 
any more than it did to Lincoln, that if the task of 
creation had been left to him he could have made a 
better Universe than the one into which he was 
born. It never occurred to him either that he 
could, of his own might, make the world over 
again. He took it as he found it, and " worked 
with things as they were." I remember his keen 
delight in a remark with which Professor Sumner 
had closed a discussion of current panaceas and 
nostrums for the reform of human nature : "These 
people," said the Professor, "are trying to make 
the world over again, but it is a tough old world 
and they can't do it." 

Gn another occasion when I was associated with 
him in journalism, he broke into hearty laughter 
over a copy of a newspaper which was conducted 



Scholar - Statesman. i 7 

on the theory that if this was not a model world it 
could be made so by persistent admonition and 
denunciation, exclaiming: " It is really a wonder- 
ful spectacle! They are editing that paper in a 
balloon. They are not only off the earth but out 
of sight of it. What they are saying applies as well 
to the planet Mars as it does to the world in which 
we are living. So far as it is permitted us to know, 
no such world as they are addressing exists any- 
where." 

His sense of humor, if not inherited from Lincoln, 
was of the same brand. It was based on the same 
accurate knowledge of human nature, the same sure 
insight into its weaknesses, follies, vanities, subter- 
fuges, and self-deceptions. It fairly compelled hirrl 
to see things as they were, to " keep his feet on the 
ground," as Lincoln had kept his. 

In that phrase, I state the distinguishing charac- 
teristic of this scholar in politics. No matter how 
high his soul might be soaring in the clouds, his 
feet were always on the earth. He had been edu- 
cated in knowledge of his countrymen by Lincoln, 
and the faith in them thus instilled into his mind 
was never shaken or dimmed. " One night," he 
records in the " Life," " Lincoln had a dream which 
he repeated next morning to the writer of these 
lines, which quaintly illustrates his unpretending 
and kindly democracy. He was in some great 



1 8 John Hay 

assembly ; the people made a lane to let him pass. 
' He is a common-looking fellow,' some one said. 
Lincoln in his dream turned to his critic and 
replied, in his Quaker phrase, ' Friend, the Lord 
prefers common-looking people; that is why He 
made so many of them.' " 

It was because he, instructed by Lincoln and by 
experience and observation, knew the people so 
well, understood so accurately what they could be 
depended upon or could be persuaded to do in 
a given emergency or crisis, that Hay had absolute 
faith in Lincoln's method of leadership — that is, 
to walk " step by step before them, slow with their 
slowness, quickening his march by theirs." He 
believed implicitly in the honesty, common sense 
and justice of the plain people, but believed also 
that while they might be hastened to a conclusion, 
they could not be harried or driven against their 
will ; that they might go wrong for a time, because 
misled or uninformed, but that in the end they 
were sure to go right. 

He believed that since ours is a government by 
party, the surest way by which to accomplish results 
was through party membership. He was a consist- 
ent and unwavering party man, but never an ex- 
treme partisan. He took his position from convic- 
tion and maintained it without faltering and with- 
out disputation. He insisted upon making up his 



Scholar -Statesman 19 

own mind, and granted the same privilege to others. 
He seldom consented to defend himself from attack, 
and while his sense of humor compelled him to find 
amusement in some of the proceedings of those 
whose ideas of political conduct differed from his, 
he seldom questioned their sincerity. I cannot recall 
an instance in which he replied to personal criticism 
of himself. He read all such attacks — for he read 
everything — and being of an extremely sensitive 
nature he felt the injustice of many of them keenly, 
but he would not consent to defend the integrity or 
the patriotism of his own acts, or to discuss the 
sincerity of his own convictions. Those were mat- 
ters between himself and his Maker. 

I wish to avoid even the suspicion of introducing 
into an address of this nature any matter that is 
either partisan or controversial. To do so would 
be a grave offense under any conditions, but would 
be especially so when the subject of the address is 
a man who throughout his life shunned contro- 
versy, leaving his acts to time for justification. 
What I am about to quote now, in reference to his 
course in recognizing the Panama Republic, I cite, 
not in defense or in apology, for he did not intend 
his utterances to be so understood, but to give an 
example of his method of meeting attack under 
extreme provocation, and also to show the influ- 
ences which controlled him in deciding all great 



20 John Hay 

questions. When the accredited representative of 
the RepubUc of Colombia, in a statement of griev- 
ances which he sent to Secretary Hay, spoke of 
" gross imputations upon the conduct and motives 
of the American government " as having " appeared 
in reputable American newspapers," the Secretary 
replied : 

" The press in this country is entirely free, and 
as a necessary consequence represents substantially 
every phase of human activity, interest and dispo- 
sition. Not only is the course of the Government 
in all matters subject to daily comment, but the 
motives of public men are as freely discussed as 
their acts ; and if, as sometimes happens, criticism 
proceeds to the point of calumny, the evil is left to 
work its own cure. Diplomatic representatives, 
however, are not supposed to seek in such sources 
material for arguments, much less for grave accu- 
sations. Any charge that this Government, or any 
responsible member of it, held intercourse, whether 
official or unofficial, with agents of revolution in 
Colombia, is utterly without justification. 

Equally so is the insinuation that any action of 
this Government, prior to the revolution in Panama, 
was the result of complicity with the plans of the 
revolutionists. The Department sees fit to make 
these denials, and it makes them finally." 

In the same reply, the Secretary also wrote: 



Scholar -Statesman 21 

The Isthmus was threatened with desolation by 
another civil war, nor were the rights and interests 
of the United States alone at stake, the interests of 
the whole civilized world were involved. The Re- 
public of Panama stood for those interests; the 
Government of Colombia opposed them. Com- 
pelled to choose between these two alternatives, the 
Government of the United States, in no wise 
responsible for the situation that had arisen, did 
not hesitate. It recognized the independence of 
the Republic of Panama, and upon its judgment 
and action in the emergency the Powers of the 
world have set the seal of their approval." 

"The interests of the civilized world," the wel- 
fare of humanity, that was the broad, firm founda- 
tion on which he built the new policy. " Europe 
knows," he wrote after the world had come to 
recognize the limitless beneficence of that policy, 
" that we cherish no dreams but those of world- 
wide commerce, the benefit of which shall be to 
all nations. The State is augmented, but it threat- 
ens no nation under heaven." Europe knew this 
because of the perfect frankness, the luminous 
intelligence, the impartial justice with which the 
policy had been avowed and executed. It was the 
work of a statesman 

" Who knew the seasons when to take 
Occasion by the hand, and make 
The bounds of Freedom wider yet." 



22 John Hay 

Two powerful sentiments were struggling for the 
mastery in John Hay throughout his life, — love of 
literature and devotion to country. He was con- 
stantly turning with longing eyes toward the open 
and inviting doorway of the intellectual life, con- 
stantly " hearing in his soul the music of wonderful 
melodies," but when the call of his country reached 
his ears it was to him always a command. In 
whatever position he was placed, he mastered not 
only its duties but mastered also everything in his- 
tory, language, literature and art that bore upon it 
or was in any way connected with it, thus satisfy- 
ing the cravings of a mind that thirsted for knowl- 
edge as the parched earth thirsts for the rain and 
dew of heaven. When he was offered the position 
of Secretary of Legation at Madrid he accepted it, 
although it was a step down in diplomatic rank 
from the places he had held at Paris and Vienna. 
He saw in it, something of far more value than 
diplomatic rank — that was, opportunity to add to 
his store of knowledge. 

From every absence in foreign lands he returned 
with his love for his country unchilled, his faith 
in it undiminished. He did not come back, as many 
other American sojourners in Europe have come, 
dissatisfied with his native land and despondent of 
its future. Least of all did he, after his return, hold 
aloof from American politics because there was 



Scholar -Statesman 23 

much in them that was distasteful to him as an edu- 
cated man. He resumed at once active duty as a 
citizen, taking his place among the " plain people " 
and working with them. His conception of patriot- 
ism would not permit him to be a mere on-looker, 
or superior critic, or professional fault-finder. He 
saw faults enough, but he was true to his faith in Lin- 
coln's method of working with things as they were 
rather than not working at all because things were 
not to his liking. I am stating his attitude without 
prejudice, and with no purpose or desire to reflect 
upon the attitude of anyone else. As I have said, 
he never argued about his course in politics or in 
public affairs. He made up his mind, settled the 
question with his conscience, and declined to make 
either defense or apology under assault or criticism. 
In his modest volume of poems, you will find this 
couplet : 

" Be not anxious to gain your next-door neighbor's ap- 
proval ; 
Live your own life, and let him strive your approval 
to gain." 

He lived his own life, with patience, charity, 
fair-mindedness, candor, modesty and indefatigable 
industry. A more conscientious man never lived. 
To him as to the sternest of the Puritans, the line 
which divides right and wrong was narrow as a 
hair, as high as heaven, as eternal as the stars. He 



24 John Hay 

drew it for himself, but never insisted upon draw- 
ing it for others. His was an individual con- 
science, not one for the regulation of the human 
race. 

To the cause of liberal education his career should 
be of inestimable value. It served the supreme 
purpose of showing what an excellent thing learn- 
ing is, what power for usefulness lies in it when 
applied with wisdom to public affairs. Lowell, in 
his Harvard anniversary address, speaking of the 
function of the college in this republic, said: 
"What we need more than anything else is to 
increase the number of highly cultivated men and 
thoroughly trained minds, for these, wherever they 
go, are sure to carry with them, consciously or not, 
the seeds of sounder thinking and higher ideals." 
That need has seldom been greater than it is to-day. 
One of those waves of unrest and discontent that 
visit us periodically is sweeping over the land fairly 
deluging it with a flood of unsound thinking from 
a multitude of untrained and half-trained minds. 
The only way by which this flood can be met and 
turned back is by confronting it with sound think- 
ing from thoroughly trained minds, that is, from 
minds like Hay's stored with that knowledge which 
is recorded experience. 

It is one of the highest functions of learning to 
be the conservator of social order by exposing error 



Scholar -Statesman 25 

and preventing its spread. It is the duty of the col- 
leges to supply this learning, to train thoroughly the 
young minds in their charge in knowledge of what 
the world has done, and to instill into them a respect 
for the results of human experience as the only safe 
guide. There is no other guide. All study is an 
effort to acquire knowledge of what men have suc- 
ceeded in doing, and of what they have failed in 
trying to do. The man who has this knowledge 
is a missionary of sound thinking wherever he goes, 
and if he will combine sound thinking with wise 
action, as Hay did, he will become like Hay, that 
most valuable agent of progress in a republic, — a 
good citizen. Wherever he goes he will exalt his 
college and spread abroad an increased respect for 
the dignity of learning and a higher appreciation 
of its value. Hay's career will be an encourage- 
ment and an inspiration to every college in the 
land. 

It should have another and scarcely less beneficial 
effect. It should impress upon the minds of all 
patriotic Americans a profound sense of the su- 
preme importance of the college to the well-being 
and progress of the State, as a promoter of enlighten- 
ment and civilization, and should arouse in them 
a keener sense of personal duty to supply it with 
that support which will enable it to give the widest 
scope to its powers. 



26 John Hay 

To his Alma Mater the fame of John Hay is 
a priceless heritage. It is the crowning glory of a 
university to send forth into the world that rare 
product, — a great man. If Brown University had 
done little else during the last half century than to 
lay firm and broad and sure the foundation of thor- 
ough training and sound thinking in the mind of 
John Hay, she would have gone far to justify her 
existence. No higher tribute to the worth of her 
mental discipline could be paid or asked. She 
showed what she could do with an intellect of the 
first rank. 

Brown was a small college in his day, with few 
buildings and with what would be considered now 
a mere handful of students. The nam^s of the 
Faculty filled scarcely a page of the catalogue, but 
it was the kind of Faculty that would convert a 
barn into a great university by assembling in it- 
Its members personified that tradition of learning 
which envelops the college like an atmosphere. 
To sit for four years in their class-rooms was of 
itself an education in the beauty and dignity of 
learning. They kindled in the impressionable and 
fertile mind of young Hay, as they did in the minds 
of countless other youths, the spark of love of 
knowledge which expanded into wider and brighter 
fiame as the years went on. I wish I could turn 
aside to pay my tribute of gratitude to these gracious 



Scholar -Statesman 27 

scholars most of whom, alas ! have passed out of our 
sight into holy memories. One graces our meet- 
ing to-day, with an aspect of imperishable youth 
which sends joy to our hearts by giving assurance 
that he will be with us for many years to come. 
As we look at him we are tempted to make a new 
translation of the old Greek poet — tempted with 
much trepidation in this presence — and to say in 
place of the old version : " Whom the gods love 
stay young till they die." 

Fellow Alumni : It is our privilege to erect here 
a memorial of John Hay which will transmit in 
visible form that tradition of learning which is the 
University's most precious possession and which 
lives like his preserve and pass on from generation 
to generation. He was the embodiment of the 
things of the spirit. In the shadow of these vener- 
able elms his love of learning was first kindled. 
Here he began that companionship with books, 
that " high converse with the mighty dead," which 
continued throughout his life. Here, under the 
inspired teaching of Lincoln and Harkness, the 
undying beauty and charm of those " classic tongues 
which are always modern," were unfolded to him, 
attuning the ear of his mind, as the study of no 
other literature does or can, to catch the high, 
clear note that rings through all the world's great 
masterpieces and speaks directly to the soul. Here, 



28 John Hay 

he learned to say with Channing : " God be thanked 
for books. They are the voices of the distant and 
the dead and make us heirs of the spiritual life of 
past ages." 

What more fitting memorial can we erect to this 
life-long lover of books, this exemplar of the excel- 
lence and usefulness of learning, than a Library 
Building? Mr. Carnegie has anticipated us in giv- 
ing utterance to what was latent in all our hearts, 
and in doing so has proffered generous aid. Let us, 
proudly jealous of our rights in this heritage, show 
that we will be second to no one in this work of 
love and honor. Let us erect not merely a library 
building, but a great library building. Let us not 
merely add another structure to those that are 
grouped about and crowd upon the old campus, 
but let us erect one that will dominate all the rest, 
that in its noble proportions will rise above the 
university community as the things of the spirit 
rise above those of the body. Let us build a tem- 
ple to the genius and beauty and power of learning 
that shall be an inspiration to ambitious youth in 
the generations that are to come, and let us inscribe 
above its portal the name of John Hay, a profound 
scholar who was a sagacious statesman and great 
diplomatist, because he employed the knowledge 
obtained from books for the glory of his country 
and the uplifting of humanity. 



Scholar -Statesman 29 

In this way alone can we show just appreciation 
of the honor which his career has brought to our 
Alma Mater and of his semces to the world. His 
fame is secure, no matter what we may do or may 
fail to do. He has taken his place in history, 
meeting in his life the test which he himself defined 
when he wrote : " History is inexorable. She takes 
no account of sentiment and intention ; and in her 
cold and luminous eyes that side is right which 
fights in harmony with the stars in their courses. 
The men are right through whose efforts and strug- 
gles the world is helped onward, and humanity 
moves to a higher level and a brighter day." 



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